Friday, June 25, 2004

Recalling the impetus for his 1992 presidential campaign, Clinton writes that he was initially ambivalent towards seeking the office, but says that a call from Porter “showed what was wrong with [then-President George H. W. Bush’s] administration.”

According to Clinton’s book, Porter—then Bush’s Economic and Domestic Policy Adviser—said that while other potential Democratic opponents could be undermined through weaknesses grounded in their politics, the Arkansas governor was “different.”

“Here’s how Washington works,” Clinton quotes Porter as saying. “The press has to have somebody and we’re going to give them you...We’ll spend whatever we have to spend to get whoever we have to get to say whatever they have to say to take you out. And we’ll do it early.”

But the only conversation Porter can recall the two having came during President Bush’s 1989 Education Summit with the Governors, at which he joked with Clinton about how he ought to run for president in much the same fashion as Ronald Reagan—as a Republican.

“We never had any conversation as he has described in his book,” Porter said last night. “You don’t remember every conversation in life, but I would certainly remember a conversation like that.”